


Smooth Water

by pendrecarc



Category: AUSTEN Jane - Works, Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, First Time, Post-Canon, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: “If I wanted easy comfort, I should not have become a captain’s wife.”
Relationships: Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth
Comments: 21
Kudos: 219
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Smooth Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaosmanor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/gifts).



To the acquisition of a wife, no man of sense or good feeling would be wise to compare any other joy; no man in any profession but one. We may perhaps make an exception for the sailor, in the event of his appointment to a ship.

So Admiral Croft told Anne, in earnest explanation—which was very nearly an apology—for the reception of his brother-in-law’s news. “You will not like it, of course, coming so close on the heels of your engagement, but it is a very good thing for Frederick. And the _Marcia_ is a fine frigate, a sweet sailor and very fine, for all she was rather knocked about in that action off Brest.”

“But that is all to the good, as far as Anne is concerned,” said his wife, smiling at Anne across the dinner table. “For she will be a month or longer refitting at Portsmouth, and though a captain is obliged to be present and attentive for much of that, he will at least still be in England. You will have him for some time, after the wedding.”

“I will comfort myself with that,” Anne replied, though she was looking not at Mrs. Croft, but at that lady's brother; Captain Wentworth’s outward attention had been directed entirely at the letter from the Admiralty, which he was just in the process of folding, but she was very conscious that he was thinking as much or more of her, and now his eyes met hers. She saw in them an affectionate good humor for Admiral Croft’s assurances, which they shared for a moment in perfect understanding; but then she saw, too, an apology of his own, and answered it firmly: “I knew very well what I was about, in accepting him; that I should not always have him at home, and must not even hope for it, both for his career’s sake and for the good of the service.”

“There, very well spoke, Miss Anne!” She had satisfied the Admiral, and perhaps Mrs. Croft as well; but though the conversation turned from these mutual reassurances to the happy anticipation of the wedding day, and of a pleasant, profitable cruise in the Mediterranean, from Captain Wentworth she had the silent promise of further words in private.

They took the first possible opportunity for these, when Mrs. Croft instructed her husband to see the carriage was brought around to take Miss Anne back to Lady Russell’s (the weather having turned since she walked up to Kellynch), and then found occupation for herself in the far corner of the sitting room. Grateful for her kind discretion, Anne took Captain Wentworth by the arm and drew him over to the window.

“It is a hard thing,” he said, “to have the long-held hope of one’s heart satisfied in one moment, and then nearly in the next to see the natural and constant expectation of one’s profession met as well, but in such a way that must set them at odds with one another!”

“You need not regret it. Indeed I hope you will not!”

“Nor do I, only I am conscious that I ought to,” said he, laughing. “It would be useless to say, that I regret at all the prospect of a command like this. But—” and he sobered, and came rather closer, “for the first time I will be leaving something behind on land, whose absence I more than regret.”

“Then we must make the best of what time we have.” Anne was very conscious of Mrs. Croft’s presence, occupied though she apparently was with some small bit of mending. “As you are so decided in your opinion of bringing women on board. And I will think on how best to draw you away from the shipyard, in the meanwhile.”

Judging by the look in his eyes, it was perhaps as well the Admiral chose that moment to fetch Anne for the carriage. As Captain Wentworth handed her up she was reminded irresistibly of that day months before, when their walking party had come across Admiral Croft’s open gig; how much more gladly did she accept his assistance now, when she could read in the lingering press of his fingers nothing of the pity or even the kindness she had had from him then. All she read—all!—was the profoundest reluctance to release her.

“A fortnight,” he said, for her ears alone, immediately before he stepped back from the carriage. “Only that much longer; and what is a fortnight after the last eight years?”

Indeed it went more quickly than she could have hoped. There were endless visits to be paid in the parish, as a more permanent taking-leave than her last; her own things to be packed; endless dinners with the Musgroves; and her family to be placated. Not, she was certain, for the last time: but it came to her with a great sense of relief that it might be the last time she felt this particular sense of responsibility for the results.

Her father’s chief concern was that she be married out of Kellynch. She was an Elliot; she was to be married in Somersetshire; it were the most shocking thing, if she could not be married out of Kellynch. Anne and Lady Russell together impressed upon him the impossibility of this, when not only was the hall itself let, but the bridegroom himself would be staying there. And Anne had flatly refused to be married in Bath. In the same way that a few hours’ terrible anxiety had not turned her against the beauties of Lyme, a short period of joy, no matter how profound, could not make that city dear to her. So she stayed with Lady Russell instead, and had in that companion at least one other person whose hopes for her future happiness matched her own; she was very near to Kellynch, and though Captain Wentworth was obliged to spend most of that time in Portsmouth, she was more often visiting with his sister than her own.

The day arrived. Of the ceremony itself there is little to say of interest to the reader, who through familiarity with the form of the service and with its principal participants may accurately construct a reasonable likeness of what occurred, and who may as easily imagine all that followed at the wedding breakfast, with such guests present as the Elliots, the Musgroves, and the Crofts together. The couple ran the gauntlet of farewells, and Anne took to their carriage at last with tears in her eyes and exhilaration in her heart.

They arrived in Portsmouth in the middle of the following day, a very rainy one; having passed a rather unsatisfactory night in an overcrowded, noisy inn, whose rooms had been small and drafty and whose beds had been hard and far too narrow. Anne had been wishing all the morning that she had taken Captain Wentworth’s suggestion to stay on the road a little longer, and find a place more comfortable. But she had not, and here they were—tired and, at least on her part, rather less satisfied with herself and with her lot than she would have expected on her first full day as a married woman. Her husband had uttered not a word of complaint, but carried about him the same air of damp and bedraggled dissatisfaction, which only evaporated when she deliberately caught his eye. There: when he looked at _her_ , there was still only happiness.

“We will go at once to my lodgings,” he said, “where you may rest, and bathe if you like; and soon we will both feel a little more human! I will only be a few hours at the docks.”

She wanted to protest, but she knew very well that it had been all he could do to carve out these few days away from the ship. There was nothing more she wanted than to have him to herself; but that was not possible, if half his mind was floating out at anchor. So she said instead, “Might you not take me with you?”

“Certainly I might, and have planned to, as soon as it is practical—when she and I will both show to somewhat better advantage. Her masts are all struck down, and the bowsprit last I saw it was not worthy of the name. As for her paint—”

“As to that,” said Anne, smiling, ”it might credibly be said, that I will not show to best advantage myself, just at the moment.” She knew an uncomfortable night and a morning on the road had done her few favors. This did not prevent her appreciation of his quick denial and, better still, the lingering glance that followed, which fully convinced her that he remained as susceptible to her attractions as ever. She followed this advantage by the simple expedient of taking his hand, and refusing to release it until they had stepped out onto the quay under cover of a wide umbrella, and he had called for a boat, and she was settled comfortably inside it, as they drew closer to the _Marcia_ with every stroke of the rower’s oars.

It came to her in the space of that short passage that this was the culmination of nine years’ endurance; that she was no longer Anne Elliot, and that Anne Wentworth owed as much to her own concerns and desires as she did to the family she had left; that here was happiness looming before her like the great curving side of the ship; that the man hailing the deck in a commanding bellow she had never heard from his lips, and which made her smile with the startling delight of it, was her husband, the partner of her life.

She reminded herself of this reassuring thought a few minutes later, as she was hoisted gently up the side; her feet dangled over a great empty space of air and slate-grey water beneath, and she was caught for a moment between sea and sky just as she was between the two halves of her life. And then she was over the side, and he was helping her down, his hands firm and warm. She turned her face to the sky and was glad even of the light drizzle that fell on it. In all the half-remembered dreams that had plagued her since the too-short summer of their first engagement, not once in any of them had it rained.

The captain’s wife was not permitted to stay long in the open. She must be ushered under a spread canvas for her introductions to all the officers: the lieutenants and midshipmen, some of whose names were familiar to her from his stories of past voyages. The bluff and disarmingly bashful master, the hearty captain of the marines; the narrow-faced surgeon and the stern purser, and all the lowlier members of the gunroom that followed. She returned their bows with smiles, all the while watching the way they moved about her husband like planets in their orbit: never too close, but always with reference to their focal point. She wanted to love these men, for their duty to him and his to them; and she saw that same grave determination in his face, together with an authority so remote and commanding as to make him almost unrecognizable. But then he reached for her arm, merely to lay a hand upon her and feel her at his side, and she knew him for her own.

The introductions complete, he sent her with quick apologies to his cabin while he attended to some matters in the open. She found it a roomier space than she had expected, with a snug cot in one corner and a sea-chest at its feet, and plenty of room for a desk and his books besides. The steward, on coming in with a bowl of hot water and a towel whiter than any in the linen cupboards at Kellynch Hall, explained this would all be shifted aside when they cleared for action or for exercises, and the cabin’s wall taken down as well—though he assured her it was quite sturdy, and she might refresh herself in perfect privacy.

This she did, letting down her hair in its damp coils and passing the warm towel over her face in a dreamlike state, lulled by the slight rocking of the ship. Out the great stern windows, she could see the rain had ceased. Above her she heard the calls of men on deck. She trailed her fingers over the polished surface of the desk, her eyes resting on the neat twine-bound stack of letters addressed in her own hand.

The cabin door opened, and she turned to see her husband there, his dripping hat in his hand. “Forgive me,” he said, stepping inside. “I did not mean to leave you so long. I am quite at leisure now; we may go whenever you like. Only tell me when you are rested, and I will call for the boat.”

“But you have been staying here, I think?” A glance over the room had told her this.

“Yes, I often sleep aboard when in port. But as I have said, there are lodgings for us in the town. Warm and dry, I assure you, and spacious, nothing like that damnable inn. You will be very much more comfortable tonight.”

“If I wanted easy comfort,” she said, crossing to him as she spoke, “I should not have become a captain’s wife.” And taking his face and her own heart between her hands, she reached up to kiss him at last.

The sigh he gave was very like a groan. His hands passed at once around her waist, the hat falling forgotten to the floor and his coat sleeves pressing rain into her gown. He made to protest, not very convincingly, to which she responded by threading one ungloved hand under the breast of his jacket and pulling him by the waistcoat away from the door.

In truth the bed was not so much larger than the one where she had slept on their wedding night, nor the room much warmer; and if she allowed herself to think on it, she knew there were men moving about just outside the door. But she felt herself and her husband an island unto themselves, surrounded by the creaking of the ship and the washing of the tide. As she sank upon him and brought him safely into harbor, as his hand drew sweet fire along her breast and side, he pressed his face into the soft side of her neck and breathed astonished, broken gratitude into her skin—all authority forgotten, all duties deferred, all pride surrendered to her tender care.

**Author's Note:**

> It was such a delight to spend time with these characters--this book is my favorite Austen. I hope you enjoy a glimpse of Anne's future happiness, and that you have a wonderful Yuletide!


End file.
